The Itchy & Scratchy Show is perhaps the most famous show-within-a-show on television. When you watch an episode of The Simpsons, more often than not, there’s a guarantee that you’ll get to watch an episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show, too. It’s like getting two TV episodes for the price of one.
Some are better than others, and they’re rarely as funny as Bart and Lisa’s hysterical laughs would suggest, but there’s still the odd gem that’s inspired and not just a satirical jab at the violence in children’s animation. So, here are The 10 Best Episodes Of Itchy & Scratchy.
The Sound of Silencers
This episode is more than just a pun on a Simon & Garfunkel song; it’s also a hilarious riff on the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, with Itchy mass-murdering a bunch of cats in a restaurant with a tommy gun. Then, he spells out “THE END” with bullet holes on the wall, with the final “D” going through one final cat.
It established that Itchy’s qualm isn’t just with Scratchy – he wants to wipe out all cats. It’s pretty sadistic. The Itchy & Scratchy episodes we see usually have some thematic relation to the plot of The Simpsons episode they’re in. “The Sound of Silencers” is an Itchy & Scratchy take on the gangster genre, placed in The Simpsons episode “Bart the Murderer,” in which Bart gets a job working for the Springfield mafia.
Scar Trek: The Next Laceration
This science fiction-themed episode terrified Homer when he watched it with Bart and Lisa in “Deep Space Homer,” but that’s only because he was heading off the space on a NASA mission the following day and the episode showed Scratchy’s head exploding in the vacuum of outer space.
This episode is filled with brilliant parodies of classic sci-fi iconography, from the chestburster scene in Alien to the EVA pod in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The outer space setting made for a refreshing change of pace from the usual Itchy & Scratchy episode, while the jokes were some of the show-within-a-show’s funniest.
Aaahhh! Wilderness!
It’s a classic sitcom trope: the characters go camping in the woods and things go wrong for them. In The Simpsons episode “Boy Scoutz ‘n the Hood,” this premise is used as Bart and Homer go camping with Bart’s Boy Scout troop. In that episode, Bart watches an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon called “Aaahhh! Wilderness!” in which Itchy uses Scratchy as a tent during a thunderstorm, nailing him to the ground to use as shelter.
Throughout the night, lightning strikes Scratchy a few times. Bart criticizes Itchy’s knot-tying techniques, since he’s been getting into his duties as a Junior Camper and can’t just enjoy the comedy.
Cat Splat Fever
This episode, taken from season 3’s classic installment “Radio Bart,” is one of the darkest Itchy & Scratchy shorts. It establishes Itchy as the villain and Scratchy as the protagonist. Itchy leaves Scratchy a suicide note that leads Scratchy to believe that Itchy is going to kill himself by jumping into a well, so he heroically dives into the well, where he gets attacked by a crocodile.
Then, his ghost rises up and Itchy shoots it. Every episode of Itchy & Scratchy has a pun in its title, and this take on the Ted Nugent song “Cat Scratch Fever” is hilarious for two reasons: it’s a good pun, and the episode’s gun violence critiques Nugent’s own political views.
Four Funerals and a Wedding
This one is famous for being one of the few episodes in which Itchy also dies, although he isn’t killed by mutilation or Acme products of destruction like Scratchy – instead, he dies of natural causes. He gave Scratchy a bride that was made of explosives and Scratchy didn’t notice, so he married the explosives and grew old with it while the fuse was slowly but surely burning out.
Then, when it finally blew and Scratchy was reduced to charred remains, old Itchy shows up and starts laughing at his burnt remains until eventually, his hysterical laughter gives him a heart attack and kills him. It’s a fun use of irony.
Esophagus Now
To tie in with the theme of “Lisa the Vegetarian,” in which Lisa decided to stop eating meat, the Itchy & Scratchy episode “Esophagus Now” sees Scratchy ordering a steak in a restaurant. Itchy is the waiter and, unbeknownst to Scratchy, he cuts out Scratchy’s stomach and serves it to him on a plate.
Scratchy eats a bite of the “steak” and then it pops straight out of the hole he cut it from. So, he eats it again and it pops out of the same hole. Scratchy remains hilariously oblivious. It’s a great gag that blends seamlessly with the message of The Simpsons episode it appears in.
Reservoir Cats
Considering it was supposedly helmed by “guest director” Quentin Tarantino, it’s surprising that “Reservoir Cats” is one of the few episodes in which Itchy doesn’t actually kill Scratchy. Instead, he tortures him in the style of Mr. Blonde in Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs.
Then, Tarantino himself (who was offered a guest appearance in the episode, but ended up being played by Dan Castellaneta) comes on-screen and says, “What I’m trying to say is that violence is everywhere, man – it’s, like, even in breakfast cereals, man...” Then, Itchy and Scratchy dance like Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace in Tarantino’s second film, Pulp Fiction.
Bleeder of the Pack
This ‘50s-themed episode goes from one utterly insane comic concept to the next. It opens set to “Rock Around the Clock,” with Itchy as a greaser and Scratchy as a cop in a Happy Days-style environment. Itchy chains his tail to a parking meter, then drives away. Scratchy chases after him on a motorcycle, but since his tail is still chained up, his skin is ripped from his body.
So, some mice paramedics get him into an ambulance and take him to a plane. The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly – who all died in a plane crash – are on board. Still, the episode subverts expectations by revealing the three musicians to be vampires!
Little Barbershop of Horrors
In The Simpsons episode “The Front,” Bart and Lisa decided to write their own Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. Since they weren’t taken seriously as kids, they put Grampa Simpson’s name on the script and it got produced as “Little Barbershop of Horrors.”
They took a simplistic premise (Scratchy goes for a haircut) and turned it into one of the funniest episodes of The Itchy & Scratchy Show to date as Itchy pours barbecue sauce and flesh-eating ants all over Scratchy’s scalp. It ends with a hilarious non-sequitur sequence in which Elvis Presley finishes watching the cartoon and shoots the TV with a revolver.
The Un-Natural
The Itchy & Scratchy episode “The Un-Natural” is more than just mindless violence. It’s also a poignant critique on the use of steroids in baseball. Scratchy is a baseball player who keeps striking out. Itchy offers him some steroids and he initially turns them down, concerned about the health-related consequences.
When he does eventually take them, he hits a home run so hard that the ball flies out of the park and all the way to the South Pole. Ashamed that Scratchy has let down America’s national pastime with performance-enhancing drugs, the Lincoln Monument comes to life and boots him into the Baseball Hall of Shame. This time, Itchy killed Scratchy with the temptation of drugs, rather than just a mallet.